Experiential Marketing Turns Traditional Marketing On Its Head

We’ve all felt bombarded by advertising at every turn. On the floor of the grocery store, the side of buildings, overflowing our email boxes, and every place in between. People are even selling body space these days. The average U.S. citizen receives an unbelievable 3,000 marketing messages a day.

The barrage of messages is greatly reducing the effectiveness of traditional marketing. People have had it with the disruptions and are beginning to ignore all advertising, even for products they care about. The Do Not Call list, SPAM blockers, pop-up blockers, digital video recorders and satellite radio are just some of the ways consumers try to escape.

So what is a marketer to do? Well, start brushing up on a new strategy: Experiential Marketing. Don’t just talk to your customer, interact with them!

According to Marketing Week, 71 percent of senior executives in the U.S. and U.K. agree that customer experience is the next big battleground. What is Experiential Marketing? Quite simply, it means creating a live, interactive experience between the consumer and the product or brand instead of just telling them about it. It’s a new way of thinking about marketing.

What’s the benefit? The customer connects in a much deeper way; the company builds a unique connection with customers, gains valuable information about them, and provides more personalized communications. As an added bonus, the customer shares the experience with friends, providing viral marketing for the company.

Let’s look at the services of one company in this space, Picture Marketing, Inc. Quite simply, they provide Experiential Marketing applications and services to leading brands across a variety of industries.

Imagine this. You’re at a car show and walk by the Lexus display. There it is, the car you’ve been wanting. Lo and behold, you can get your picture taken with the car and be seen on the cover of Car & Driver magazine. You wait in line, get your picture taken, go home, fill out an online survey and, there it is, your first magazine cover! You forward the cover with your picture to your friends. And all around your picture is messaging from the car company. A few days later you receive a direct mail piece with your cover, directions to your nearest Lexus dealer and information on the car that caught your attention.

What’s the benefit for the car company? You’ve connected in a much more personal way with the product via a memorable experience. Lexus had you around that car for several minutes as you waited and finally got your picture taken. The experience continued for days as you got your picture and forwarded it to friends. You felt a much stronger connection to the brand and the car. And Lexus got valuable information through the survey--a lead. This lets them market to you with personalized communications that relate to your interests. Ultimately they generate a much greater return on investment for their marketing dollars. Everyone wins!

Research supports the success of these efforts. According to a survey by Jack Morton Worldwide, 53 percent of consumers said Experiential Marketing enhances their brand perception; 90 percent said it makes them more receptive to other advertising; and a high percentage say it drives a quicker purchase.

Explains Art Michalek, director of marketing at Yokohama Tire Corp, a user of Picture Marketing: “We’ve planted a seed in their minds for the next time they consider tires and furthered our relationship with them. We’ve given the consumer a valuable keepsake, and they’ve given us permission to follow up with them with future offers and information. In the end, long after we’ve dismantled the booth and gone back to our offices, the Picture Marketing program helps us continue to be top-of-mind.”

This is just one type of solution with one industry. There are many others. Big company or small, tradeshow or festival, expensive car or inexpensive soft drink, Experiential Marketing is working. Consumers say that these types of interactions with the brands make them more likely to purchase the product. Experiential marketing begins an ongoing dialogue with the brand. And it cuts through the clutter.

Email Marketing: Affordable Internet Marketing Technique

Email marketing is labeled as a killer method when it comes to effective low-cost Internet marketing endeavors. This is because it is the most widely-used and has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites. It is used to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers.

It's as easy as writing an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and sending that to as many targeted recipients as possible. However, there's an ideal way of going about it. Email marketing is not just about writing any email that you will be sending to anybody. To clarify that, here are some simple tips in doing email marketing the best way possible.

1. Join the "Can Spam" campaign.

Email marketing is not at any rate tantamount to spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for.

2. Make your email list open it.

Your email might get lost together with the hundreds of emails that inbox owners are confronted with everyday. Improve your subject line by using extra white space creatively, adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter, asking compelling questions, not making any unbelievable claims, and not using the word FREE.

3. Keep it real.

Not including any too good to be true statements is not only applicable to your subject line. Your email content must never embody any promise your business can't keep. Make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.

4. Don't go too low.

If you inform your customers regarding discounts, minimal discounts are not that effective compared with substantial discounts. But never offer discounts that are lower than your profit. It will defeat the purpose of this email marketing effort.

5. Make it eventful.

It's not about contradicting the advice that you should keep an email short and sweet. This tip is on including seminars, conferences and other events in your email. Businesses that require training benefit much from this method. With these RSVP-requiring emails, repetition is important. Just make sure that an ample interval is considered before sending out a reminder email.

6. Post news.

Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point for this feat to be effective.

With these simple ways of going about your email marketing endeavor, your business will prosper in no time.

8 Part Strategy For Constructing Your Advertising Message

Strategies to help produce your brochure, advertisment or direct mail. And make it achieve more sales.

1. Attract & keep the customer's eye

Your customer must be kept glued to your words. They may leave at any point of your copy so keep it attractive and relevant to their needs, right through to their decision to purchase.

Words, pictures and the customer:

Don't go overboard with pictures, its words that sell. You'll need your product photo of course but its the caption or headline that will make the difference. And the headline will be a benefit.

People buy products for what it will do for them, not what it looks like. Quite often, you'll see products like printers with features listed below an image. Here the advertiser has assumed that everyone knows the benefits of their printer and just need to know the specific features.

However a lot of people don't respond to pictures and lists of features, but they may respond to a photo of the product in use. For example you could show a child sat using a computer.

But that's not enough. Add a headline such as...'Now YOUR child can obtain higher grades' and that should get parents interested. You get the idea. The body text would describe how the computer helps children to learn.

Be very wary about using an agency to produce your copy writing. They may not know the principles involved in successful selling. The only way you can be sure is to have control over the production..usually unlikely when dealing with agencies... or produce the content yourself.

2. Content strategies

a) Descriptions: A lot of promtional documents leave the customer to guess at the benefits of the product or service advertised. They just describe it and their company. This is not good. Don't do it this way.

b) Comparisons: Here you could compare your product/service with your competitor's and specify how much better your's is. You could get in trouble if you name the other company and/or can't back up your claims with evidence. Works best by you having a major provable advantage over your competitors..and not naming them.

c) Storyline: A favorite with lots of folk. Tell a story involving the person the customer will relate to in a situation that shows the benefits your product/service gives that person.

Use a 'before using the product' and 'after using the product' strategy. At the end the person will summarise how much better their situation is nw after using your product. And you tell your readers how it will help them as well.

The hard bit is writing a true story. It's less effective than a made up one.

d) The most effective strategy is to use the well-known AIDCA formula..see section 8 further down.

3. Inspiration

My answer is to go for a walk in the countryside. There are two halves to our brains; the left being for logical functions and the right half for creative thinking. Apparently few logical people are able to take advanatage of the creative side at will. You have to relax and trick the brain into releasing your ideas.

Walking and daydreaming are a couple of techniques to employ.

4. Ideas for copy

You need to saturate your brain with all the elements about your product or service. Study what your product is made of, how strong it is and how it is put together. Consider the manufacturing process and the care taken throughout the production.

Write down all these details with the angle of 'how much better than our competitors is our product' and 'in what ways?' Write down your conclusions.

Do the same for your service. Take your service apart and study it as individual steps. Do your customers know about these steps? What benefits do these steps have for your customers? Maybe your competitors don't mention theirs and you could take advantage of this.

Your customer needs to be in the fore-front of your mind. Particularly your main customer group, the ones who share a common need. Don't forget, you'll want to aim separate message if you have more than one target customer group.

5. Producing your copy

Don't overdo it when you first start to put your ideas down on paper. Go over your notes and details about your product or service a few times and have a break from that particular subject for a day or too if necessary. I'm not saying take it to easy but don't try to force yourself, it won't work.

During this initial period you may well be getting flashes of inspiration and ideas ay odd moments. Write them down. I would advise always carrying a notebook or maybe a voice recorder to ensure all your creativity is not lost.

When you have decided to formally put everything down, find yourself a quiet room and ideally use a large A2 pad (which can be found in art stores) to record your information. Remember, you are writing down what it is you want to say to your customers to make them buy.

Write down the most important 'buying factor' on the pad. Then continue to put down all the others related to customer needs and buying factors. Forget any logical order, put them down as they come to you, adding detail as necessary. Keep relaxed and don't censor any ideas you have (unless they are too far removed from your area). You could intoruce others into this exercise and in effect hold a group brainstorming session.

You should end up with several pages of ideas.

6. Compiling messages needed to sell

You will see many ideas that you are familiar with but there may be some that you are not. Do some research on these. Your competitors may not have bothered and there could be some gold here.

Next you need to group together related ideas with colored pens. You'll find some remaining that don't fit in a group, but keep these. They may come to life later.

Now you need to structure your results so that you can develop your 'story' to relay to your customer. Put the group headings around a circle and then like the legs of a spider put the related ideas along them in order of sequence, importance or whatever criteria you have decided.

As you do all this your creative side will flag up more ideas to add to the pool. Now you can get some feedback from colleagues or even customers on what you have produced. This will optimise your results even further.

7. Producing your copy framework

You have two choice here. Hand your work over to a copywriter or carry on yourself. If you are carrying on yourself you need to decide on the most appropriate approach as defined in section 2 above; descriptions, comparative, situation or benefits.

Your message will be built around the AIDCA structure.

Attention: You must get the readers attention within seconds using your headline.

Interest: Get your prospect interested in your product.

Desire: This is where you detail how their needs can be fulfilled.

Conviction: Provide proof that this is the product that they need.

Action: Here you tell them what they must do to get it.

8. Using the AIDCA formula

Attention seeking headlines: Often the headline is left till last as it is the most difficult part of the message. And you may find it in the main copy itself. Short headlines rarely work. Remember, if you are using a picture its the wqords that will matter. The picture is a supporting element.

'Benefit' type headlines are best (even better if they are tiny storylines) with 'News' type second best. Generally you should include your product and the main benefit. Length is less important. Brochures, mailshots and magazine adverts tend to have longer headlines than straightforward advertisements.

Interest to be aroused: This is where you tell your main story using one of the strategies described earlier; description, comparative, situation or benefits.

Concentrate on how your product or service fulfils primary and secondary needs. Relate how it satisfies the customers buying factors and success factors that you have defined in your marketing assessment.

Desire to be created: You need to be enthusiastic here in describing what the product or service can do for the customer. Convince them that they will really benefit from your product. Expand on the detail. For example if your car is economical to run then write about how much money they will save and then buy a holiday with it.

Conviction needed: Here you need to prove to the reader that your claims about your product are true. Assume that they will disbelieve your cliams. If you have statistics use them. Show graphs. Show testimonials or endorsements from satisfied customers. Don't make them up. How could you prove they were real?

Action: It is imperative that you tell your readers what action you want them to take. And include a benefit along with it. For example; "Send for our full color catalogue. Its FREE, there is no obligation to buy."

There you have it! An 8 part strategy to help compile your advertising message and get you more sales.

Is Your Advertising Working?

How do you know your advertising is working for you, do you know exactly who is buying your products or services. Many companies and businessmen even those who are making a reasonable living have no idea where their income is generated from.

Keeping good records of customers will help to expand your marketing ventures. Where they are buying, how did they get to know about your products or services these are questions you need to be asking yourself.

Placing adverts in a magazine is no guarantee that sale will come rolling in. If you are butcher and you supply special exotic cuts of meat and you are advertising in a butchers magazine you are still not guaranteed the sales will happen. This magazine might have a lower income audience so your $200 steaks are definitely not going to hit the tables.

A simple market survey to identify where your customers are coming from will ensure your advertising dollars are spent in the right places. If contacted by a customer ask him: how, where, when and obvious questions related to your products or services.

Trying to create the right marketing mix is a constant battle especially if you are starting a business. Where to advertise and what guarantees do you have that your magazine advert will work. For starters find a magazine that relates to your services or products, this is a start. The next step is to contact that publication and find out what bracket their readership falls into. Other than this without a track record of advertising in that particular publication you will have know idea if its the publication best suited for your needs.

Your customers are your best form of advertising without them you are nowhere. It is vital to know everything about him/her, attach a simple questionnaire to your products and make sure your employees sell solutions to your customers.

Another tip in closing about placing an advertisment, always make sure your advertisment is placed on the far right of the right hand page. Natural reading patterns are from left to right so the eyes tend to come to rest in this position. You are paying for this advert so stress this to the publication, i am sure they can accommodate you in this regard.

The Main Purpose of Advertising from a South African Perspective

The main purpose of advertising in the business world is to promote sales in order to boost profits. As such, advertising has three basic aims:

To inform To persuade and To remind

One of the most underestimated points is to REMIND. The cost of advertising is extremely high. One may therefore wonder if it is not a waste of money to advertise a product which is widely known and which has a good slice of the market. Take Coca-Cola for instance. It is known and is readily available in almost every city in the world and yet the company continues to advertise it. Why is this so, and is the company wasting profits?

As i have already said, advertisers aim to inform the public about new or improved products and services and to persuade them to buy or use them. However, once the company has a slice of the market, it needs to remind the public that the products or services are still available, or it may well lose out to its competitors. I would be willing to bet anything if Coca-Cola stopped informing the public about their products a company like Pepsi would be the next giant.

Many large companies have fallen into this trap, once they have their market they automatically assume people will carry on buying the products or services they offer. The ability to constantly inform consumers of a companies products and activities is an ongoing commitment that keeps major share holders in a specific line at the top.

People (consumers) are highly complex creatures and do not always behave or react as rationally as one would expect. Advertising and marketing companies realise that consumers DO NOT BUY COMMODITIES, there are only two things they buy, 1. good feelings 2. solutions. One does not need a degree in psychology to know that everyone wants to be accepted, that people fear rejection, and that most of us wish to be successful, wealthy, attractive and one step ahead of the Jones'es. Take for example toothpaste, the fact that oral hygiene is the most important 'feature' this alone won't sell the product. Constant advertising to inform consumers of the fact that toothpaste makes you 'nicer to be near', 'keeps your mouth tingling fresh', and gives you advanced breath freshness are the 'sell ilnes' used to sell toothpaste. Don't just sell me a suit, sell me a sleek look, a tailor made fit and custom label that will turn heads.

A product or service that has been around for a long time has to find new an innovative ways to sell their 'wares' as well as emerging products. How to inform potential customers of what they should be buying, or why they should be buying are as varied as mass of different products for sale on the global market.

The advertising industry is, of course aware of our desire to be as good as, if not better than, others and exploits this to their own advantage. By using all they know about consumer behaviour, advertisers manage to persuade the public to buy the products they are promoting. Powerful appeals to human nature are often hidden within the advertisment. The subtle way in which these messages are used to inform the consumer is what makes advertising such a fascinating study.

Profitable Affiliate Marketing Using Incentive Offers

The biggest companies want to sell their products and services on the Internet. One of the best ways to market their products and services online is by offering a commission to website owners. This is done by setting up an affiliate program where webmasters can pick up the links to offers and promote them on their web sites in exchange for affiliate commissions for each sale made.

Webmasters have many ways to promote these affiliate offers - on websites, by email, with pay-per-click search engines, writing and distributing articles, etc.

However, a little-known way to promote these offers is by using incentives to online surfers who agree to buy a product or service from the webmaster.

One of the best ways to market incentive offers is by building a membership-based website and giving free cash to members who agree to accept affiliate products and services.

Here are the steps for setting up a successful incentive-based website:

1. You'll have to build a database-driven website where new members can sign up and start browsing offers after logging in. Such websites usually promote at least a hundred of various offers. You should offer your members about 50% of the commission that you recieve from an affiliate program.

One of the biggest disadvantages in starting an incentive-based website is that the scripts for running such program are quite complicated. However, if you don't know Internet programming and cannot build the website by yourself, you can hire someone to create the scripts for you or purchase them online.

2. After your website is up and running, you should apply for affiliate networks that allow incentive traffic. When your application is approved you should set up offers on your website.

3. You should market the incentive offers not only on your website but by email too. Sending paid email to your members is one of the best ways to increase your profit. You should reward your members with a certain amount of cash for reading each paid email and redirect them to affiliate offers where they can earn even more extra cash by accepting the offers.

4. Since the incentive traffic is usually limited to certain countries, you should promote your website to the visitors of these countries only. The best ways to drive targeted traffic to your incentive-based website are: pay-per-click search engines, email marketing and affiliate marketing (by setting up your own affiliate program).

5. You should manage your website by setting up new offers, paying members their earned payments, suspending fraudulent accounts and tracking your website advertising campaigns.

Some incentive-based websites offer a point system. It means that members earn points instead of cash. Later these points can be redeemed for cash or any other items.

Incentive marketing on the Internet can be very profitable. Anyone can start an excellent home-business online within several weeks and run it spending only a couple of hours per day. It doesn't require any complicated and time-consuming content writing for websites and newsletters. The investment in scripts is low.

Promote Your Band Using Various Marketing Methods

This is a paper on how to promote your band, over the past 12 months I have been in contact with a hundreds of bands looking to become famous in LA. Everyone wants to a hit! Well it all comes down to being discovered! You can be the best band in the world and if you don&;t market yourself right well good luck! Lets analysis fortune 500 companies. Take a look at there budgets They dump 35% to 65 % or more of their profits back into marketing and advertisements every year. Becoming and remaining number one requires a lot of work. Advancing to more and more new customers not only requires more and more marketing but keeping the old ones happy!

Wanting to Promote your band with Live performances and marketing new ideas well you have come to the right spot.

Once people have bought a bands CD and their tee shirt, and seen the band live now what? Note, promoting a band is a lot of more then just t-shirts and cd&;s hell anyone can do that! You need to promote in many ways, just look at fortune 500 companies they email, do giveaways, mini dvd discs promo&;s, cold calling, internet marketing etc. You must do at least 3 forms of promoting to get a response out of your audience. The newsiest one for bands is musicmp3 ringtones which we will get into later.

We will go over many ways of promoting your band:

1. Great item that I have seen so far are mini DVD discs called pocketreels. These mini dvds can go a far way just think what people would do if you handed them a mini dvd. They go crazy and they are super impressed! Place a nice video of your band on it and see how many new customers you receive at your next show!

2. Having a photograph or videoagrapher at your shows to help promote your band is a good thing. They can take pictures and or videos and upload the images or videos to your website which can boost mailing lists and a fan club! And then they may be compelled to come to your next show and bring more friends or soak in the opportunities for fame and the live music experience itself. For video or photographer outlets call PR Productions at 310-694-8350 for CALIFORNIA only. They have the best crews around but they are not cheap. Shoots start at $400 + editing.

3. That brings us to a mailing list, each visitor to your website you should be collecting their email address so you can send them useful information like when your next show is going to be.

4. Promoting your band is not easy so do your self a favor and get a good publicist to promote your band. A good one can get you in 3 to 4 magazines and newspapers in one month for free, of course you have to pay the publicist but it will be well worth it. It can range from $400 to $2000. Note you can do this part yourself if you know how to negotiate with editors.

5. Promote your band by creating a really cool website! CMS stands for Content Management system A good website will cost: starting at $1000 but it will have video, email list generators, photo section and best of all easy management. They are a little bit more then a regular website but the ROI

Or return on investment is greater then a plain website. You can change show times just like myspace and it makes it really easy for owners to manage so in the long run you save big!

6. Make a professional music video for your band or gig. This will help with promoting your band.

7. Saving the best for last Another great way to promote your band is by making a mp3 ringtone, or polyphonic ringtonefor example you can download a nickelback ringtone and wow free advertising everytime someone calls that person and bam there is a song on your phone. You need help making your own mp3 or polyphonic ringtone please goto A-FREE-RINGTONE.COM By making a ringtone like nickelback you can have your song ringing all over the world!

Your goal is to continue to reach more and more locals. Develop more ways to attract people&;s attention. Always have something on you to promote yourself with.

Just for example. In an area with one million people, if you are getting less than 100 people to every show, perhaps you could be doing much more to reach more of the people in the community?

It's tough out there, and you must be relentless every day to meet new people, shake hands and hand out your mini DVD discs or if you can&;t afford mini DVD discs get free business cards by click here and smile at people who are passing by you on the street and in stores when you are out shopping alone or with friends, in bars carousing. Go out and meet new people. Walk up to people, introduce yourself, Hi, my name is Scott I play at ___ ___ place on blank night. What do you do? Here is my promo disc (mini DVD) with my video or here is my business card with my website on it. You can download my mp3 ringtone (or my polyphonic ringtone) for free at this address. “ Hand them a card with the information on it. Note always test all information you hand out before hitting the road. Nothing is worse then a fan going home and something you handing them not working!

Have a stack of Mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in your pocket at all times ready to hand out. Make sure on your Mini DVD, Business card or flyer you have your contact information, website, and the next local performance. You do this 20+ times per hour for 2-3 hours and then youre distributing at least 50 mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in those 3 hours.

You then go back to your car and re-stock. Grab something refreshing to drink, munch on a a sandwich, or whatever, and move on to the next part of town, or the next gathering of people. Or go to the next live gig, the next bar, the next scene etc. and you keep it going.

Once or twice a week, you hit Kinko&;s, or the copier next to your office desk and you photocopy flyers and any designs you&;ve created for promotion of your demos, etc. Better yet think ahead and goto gotprint.com much better deals then Kinko&;s. (EXAMPLE 5000 post cards for $99 full color first side!)

Sell yourself. Meet with people and sell yourself. They dont know what youre doing. And unless you sell yourself, they wont care about what youre doing. They want to care, but they depend upon YOU to make that happen. People want so badly to care about something besides there problems. They want something to believe in. Entertainment helps take them there. You can be that entertainer, that leader of willing people of all ages that helps them to believe that there just might be something in this world worth caring about. They want to listen to you, and they want you to tell them about something that really matters to you. So, stay informed and develop interests in topics that may be discussed, even debated. Maybe you are trying to make a difference in the world - one person and one performance at a time. People want to believe in this and they want to believe in you. so, get out there and make it happen.

Use a Funded Proposal to Build Your Network Marketing Business Quickly, Easily, and Inexpensively

Have you ever attempted to build a Network Marketing business? Did you achieve the results you wanted or expected? If not, you are among 95% of the other people who have attempted to succeed at Network Marketing.

The problems are lack of marketing knowledge and not using a true duplicatable system to the fullest extent possible.

You may have had wonderful products to sell. However, products never sell themselves and they do not build down lines. They do however, sustain down lines.

Leadership and marketing systems sell products and build down lines.

Network Marketing is all about marketing, training, and promotion. Unfortunately, it is pursued by people who do not know how to market, train, and promote. 95% of the people doing Network Marketing are doing everything wrong. This business is all about marketing. When you do it right, you do not have to sell and anyone can duplicate.

What are people looking for who are investigating a network marketing opportunity? The answer is simple: They are looking to solve a problem. That is all. When they look at the typical network marketing opportunity they see an initiation fee, recurring product purchases, lots of negativity from their warm market, and marketing or advertising expenses. This creates a problem for them, not solve one.

A Funded Proposal system is all about marketing. When you do it right, you will always succeed and anyone can duplicate your success by plugging into the system. A Funded Proposal system is also about solving problems.

Using a Funded Proposal system, your network marketing company (the primary business) comes last, not first. The system works every time no matter what network marketing company, if any, you are working. It creates solutions for your prospect’s problems. They are:

1. Building businesses
2. Building a prospect list
3. Generating leads and
4. Showing a profit.

It becomes a reliable source for your prospects and your down line.

By using a Funded Proposal system, you and your down line have all of the free training they need to be able to build your businesses by using Internet Marketing techniques. All you have to do is plug yourself and your down line into it.

Then you use low to medium cost affiliate programs to provide you with a customizable web site, hosting, e-mail services, quality lead generation, and a compensation plan that pays for your marketing and other expenses as well as making you a profit. Your down line and new recruits also begin to build their affiliate businesses and make money. This creates trust. Once this occurs you can introduce your people to your primary network marketing business.

Once you and your down line are up to speed on the system, it is not unusual for each of you to recruit 15 to 25 people per week. I know people who average 50 new recruits per week. Very few people drop out of this system.

So there you have it. Network marketing the way it should be done--without all the stress of presentations and recruiting the hard way. It works and it works well. I hope to see you there.

Tourism internet marketing and the power of home page

Home Page is always the most important page of any website. Your Home Page shows your professional essence, the appealing image of your product or services, your company’s operation scale and more.

In fact, your Home Page is the face of your company in the internet market.

Home Page is designed interactively with other pages scientifically; combine with other online promotional tools such as banner ads, keyword placement, email marketing, online customer relation and different transition to create a common business image in the mind of your prospects, your clients and your partnerships.

There is a great resource for Home page Optimizization in Tourism Marketing Forum. Click the link below to get a forum account to read this resources:

Below are design tips of a good Home Page for almost of tourism websites.

1)Catch the attention immediately

There is no place for a badly-designed Home Page in market share. In common, you just have 10-20 seconds to catch the visitors’ attention when they do researching for travel or room services information.

Why? The reasons are:

UN ugly Home Page shows your lack of professional business operation and creates a negative feeling in the mind of the surfers about your quality of your products services. Tourism is the business of invisible products; the visitors, therefore have to try to imagine how good your services are base on the visible things you have such as your facilities, your staff appearances, your reputation… if these things are beautiful, clean, ordered…it means your services is good to be used, and there is a contrary, too.

So, design the best Home Page as you can by yourself or hire a design professional do it for you. Costs for it maybe much but it’s always the best investment you’ve done.

2)Use the company theme

Your company must have a business theme in order to create a common image about your business activities.

A good theme distinguishes your business with the other.

A best theme often originates from your Unique Selling Position, and brings great advantage of marketing for your business.

………

In short, if you want do business for long time, create a theme at the beginning of operation, develop it as your business progress (in fact, both develop together), and when you’ve grown to be a rather large business, your theme will become the main strength in your brand building strategy.

A theme is a comprehensive sense of all aspect of your business, but the most seen is your company’s logo, slogan, typical image, typical color…do you have it? I hope you have, or should create it immediately, it is not late!

Now, integrate your company’s theme with your Home Page design, create a specific feeling in the mind of your visitors both online and offline anytime they see or contact with your business.

This will make the design process more easily, no need to choose a theme, you’ve already had it. Just design it, keep the theme but drop some small creative change to suit the design requirement; the online appearance, anyway, is something different from the real world. I think you also agree with me about this difference.

Remember to combine or integrate the live – operation of your marketing campaign between online and offline market. They support each other, and your theme is the main bone to create a united image. First point to success.

3)Give the profit right away

Your Home Page is always the first communication with your prospects. Therefore, show all your strength of your services right away, on the Home Page. Catch the mind of your website visitors. Do not bury the great benefits of your services on other pages.

It won’t work effectively.

Prospective travelers may or may not choose to visit your destination based on what they read on your website – usually just your Home Page. So tell prospective travelers that your destination or tour is safe, secure and fun to visit.

Show out your Unique Selling Position, what your services has while your competitors do not. Describe these comparative advantages in a manner of benefit your visitors; create a good difference in the mind of your prospects is one of the first reason to make them find more information about your services and it is a crucial factors in their buying decision.

If you have any kind of discount, coupon, free, surplus services, gift certification… Make it attract the eyes of your visitors immediately. Do not hide these promotional things in the sale page.

Something new such as events, festivals, new kind of services must be notified clearly. Tell the visitors about the benefits of the event, remind them to participate or check in before too long/ or out of vacancy.

The content of your Home Page is always new, exactly and locally. The picture must be local uniqueness and in best quality. Pictures of your visitors enjoying the benefit of your services enclosed with a good caption assure the great benefits are best effective. Use it.

4)Professionally and scientifically design

The Home Page leads to other page. It is the biggest crossroad of a site. There are many links to different pages or website’s section.

Therefore, scientifically design it. Do not make your visitors confuse with all the link text or image.

A good Home Page will have links to other pages which provides information about four core areas:

• How to get there (e.g., air travel, trail, bus, coach)

• Getting around (e.g., car or boat rental)

• Accommodation services

• Things to do (e.g., place to see, shopping, show, events)

These links should be easy to navigate and use. Please do not put any link to other site unless you want your visitors click on them, lose your sight and seldom return.

5)Call to action

Home Page should be the first page clearly tells the visitors what to do next to receive your special services or find out more information they want. A link to preservation page a short call to action text link should be placed attractively on your Home Page.

Remember that we do not know how many website the visitors have surfed before they reach our site. They maybe tired of surfing more and just want to find the right services supplier who creating a good impression enclose with some good promotional items to make the final choice. And we are prepared for them!

80% of all buying decision bases on the emotion. So after you have created a good impression on your services, then it is easier to lead your visitors naturally. A smart thing to do is put a link to your preservation page and call the visitor to book your services.

If we bury out link to preservation page after several other page, the emotion maybe reduces due to their distraction on these page content.

Follow these helpful steps in designing your Home Page to boost your website sell. Hope you enjoy this article and remember to read the other of mine.

Marketing: What You Really Need Vs. What You Think You Want

Clients approach me all the time saying, “Tell me what I need to do to market my services.” I ask, “What do you mean?” They say, “Tell me how to blog/podcast/what to say on my website,” (fill in your own specific here). That’s when I know they lack the one thing without which they’ll never really make it.

It’s easy to hung up on details. Marketing advice often makes it even more enticing, promising you phenomenal results if you only do X. The “X” changes every few weeks and usually says more about the person who wrote the advice than what you really need to dod. Since advice is ever-present and ever-changing, for anyone trying to keep up it always feels like marketing is a big overwhelming thing that can never be fully tackled. In this dread, they are both right and wrong.

Marketing methods ARE endless. You can spend a lifetime learning about them, implementing them, collecting data as to their efficacy and tweaking your results. For the service professional (not the professional marketer) it is not necessary to learn them all. So the good news is, while marketing information is endless, your grasp of it need not be complete.

What you really DO need is marketing confidence. It is a key ingredient without which your marketing will fail. Of the over 700 people that signed up for a recent series of teleclasses I did on the subject, nearly every one either during the classes or via e-mail told me the same thing: “I am very confident in life but when it comes time to marketing, I get uncertain and afraid.” In short, they lack marketing confidence. It’s different that regular, “garden-variety” confidence. But what to do to build it up?

The methods I had participants employ were simple and gave results right away.

1. Get serious about what your REAL goals are.

9 times out of 10, your goals are not what you think they are. Going after artificial goals will wreak havoc on your marketing confidence (and, hence, your results) because you’ll never have the steam to keep on going until you get them. If you’re going after goals that don’t make you jump out of bed in the morning and enthusiastically cheer, “Time to get to work on those goals!” (and I’m only half kidding there) then you’re not working on your real goals.

2. Do it, don’t think about doing it.

Probably the most critical thing you can do to build your marketing confidence is DO things. So many service professionals get into paralysis by what they consider the overwhelming job of marketing. That’s when the marketing research overdrive response kicks in. You figure if you just gather enough information, you’ll feel they have a grasp on marketing. Actually, the opposite is true. The more you research, the more overwhelmed you become. The only way to alleviate the overwhelm is to start trying things out and experiencing the results to understand not just what works, but what works for you.

3. Give to get.

Too often in marketing a professional practice, we measure success in terms of results. Results are critical, of course, but in a high-trust exchange, such as happens when you sell a high-ticket service, very often the prospect will not buy on first contact. If you walk away after an initial “no,” or “sorry, not interested,” you are walking away from great opportunities. The practice of giving to get, wherein you demonstrate your expertise by giving people either free or low-fee access to it, is a great way to start building a reputation.

4. Build mastery in your craft. It takes being good to know you’re good.

Very often I hear from clients, “I fee like, ‘Who am I to be charging those high fees?’” Often they want a pep talk when they ask that. Instead, I ask them, “What would it take for you to know without a doubt that you MUST be charging that?” Too often we want to coddle ourselves and others when we don’t feel “good enough.” But in order to really build your marketing confidence, you must be excellent at what you do. So what’s that going to take? How must you hone your skills, what training must you attend, how many people must you work with until you know you’re excellent without any hesitation? Once you know the answer to that, set out a path to accomplish it.

5. Be continuously challenged.

Piggybacking on #4, it helps to get out of your comfort zone at every opportunity. You’ve heard the old metaphor about building muscles with increasingly heavier weights. If you want to be a highly sought-after professional, respected in your field, you need to push yourself all the time. What’s it going to take?

6. Research. Then do it your way.

People seem to have an insatiable urge to “just do a little more research.” While this is great, very often it’s detrimental, as I explained above. So if you must research, please know this. Everyone who gives you marketing advice is telling you only PART of the information. The part they can’t possibly tell you is how it’s going to work for you. So understand that when you read about the great new method you MUST try, or how you won’t be able to make it until you try X, know that may not apply to you. The sooner you take ownership of your practice and your marketing future, the happier and more successful you’ll be.

Internet Marketing for Lawyers

This article deals primarily with Internet marketing for lawyers and to a lesser degree non-Internet marketing for lawyers. Various forms of Internet marketing and non-Internet marketing are discussed with some very innovative Internet marketing solutions thrown in for the lawyer to think about or act upon.

Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they must market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does – how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend -- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.

Prior to the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone’s guess -- it’s hard for your colored, one page display ad to stand out when you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that “bigger is always better” and “everything we sell is an opportunity,” so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little. This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they’ll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source of leads.

The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. “Bigger is always better,” so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial sense and produces a decent ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as many top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at least they’ll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but expense.

While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to “pay for a lead” takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords, e.g., “personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer,” can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer’s conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.

Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend little time creating their pay per click ads and (2) the ads direct traffic to the lawyer’s website. Any Internet marketing professional who knows something about pay per click knows you never send pay per click traffic to a website. Instead you create special pages, i.e., “landing pages” for pay per click traffic to be directed to. The landing pages perform the job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.

Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that “look” like they offer a lot -- and a price to go with it -- but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend. Many legal Internet directories and portals exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it’s not how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.

What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.

Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising – the way that will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is to focus on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don’t find what they want they may turn to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.

If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn’t require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with these programs worth it.

Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.

One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer’s website should be too.

Internet Marketing

After spending a lot of time and effort on building a site, many wonder where they should start with Internet marketing. Site owners can be bombarded with pitches about marketing and it is hard to sort out what should be done. In this article, a short term marketing strategy is discussed.

Short Term Marketing Strategy

The single best short term marketing strategy is pay-per-click marketing campaigns. A “PPC” campaign simply involves placing advertisements on the results pages of search engines. In essence, you open an account with the PPCs, develop a list of keywords and create ads for those keywords. The two best PPC platforms are Google Adwords and Overture.

Google Adwords lets you place ads on Google search results. In addition to its own search engine, Google also supplies search results to AOL and other sites. When you create your ads, you can choose to place your ads on “content” or “search” results. Select only “search” results until you are sure the advertisement and your site coverts traffic into revenues.

Yahoo purchased Overture a few years ago for 1.8 billion dollars. Overture places advertisements on search results for MSN and, ta da, Yahoo among others. To build your ads, you search for keywords from a list provided by the PPC and create individuals ads. It can take a long time, but it is worth it.

Which PPC is Best?

Both Google and Overture have serious benefits. Google will send more traffic to your site than Overture. Getting your ad in front of AOL users is particularly advantageous because AOL users are buyers. For whatever reason, they simply seem to be more amenable to buying what you’re selling.

If Google is so great, why use Overture? In many ways, Overture has serious advantages over Google Adwords. One of the biggest advantages involves the size of ads.

To effectively run a profitable PPC campaign, you must get the maximum bang for your buck. One strategy for doing this is to qualify your traffic by explaining details in your description. If you only carry one model of a product, say that so money isn’t wasted with people who are looking for a different model clicking on your ad. With Google, you only get two to three words in your title and 8 to 10 in your description.

PPC advertising is a tremendous short term marketing strategy for a number or reasons. First, the advertising gets traffic to your site immediately. Second, it allows you to test the ability of your site to convert traffic into dollars. If conversions are low, you can modify the site and get immediate feedback.

If its time to get working on your marketing, research the PPC possibilities. Google Adwords and Overture have a lot to offer.

Viral Marketing 101

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. Because competition and rivalry abounds, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a professionally designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worst of all, your business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; not only is that illegal, you would probably tick off all of your customers (so much for return sales). Besides, everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spyware anyways.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing, also known otherwise as Viral Advertising, is a marketing technique used to build public awareness of a product or company. It employs many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product as would a traditional advertisement. Viral Advertising is much more elegant and stealthy in its means. By taking on other forms of communication, your marketing piece could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass the product along. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, it most likely will not end up in junk mail and, even better still, may even get read.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of Viral Marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence. All of this can be done for free (or darn near close to it!).

Most every company and website is catching on to the efficacy of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, Viral Marketing could easily push you ahead in the ratings game.

Viral Marketing is a stealthy way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. It is so inexpensive that not doing it could be downright business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story; many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”? Compare that with Blair Witch 2 – this time with traditional advertising as opposed to word of mouth - it was a failure in comparison.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

Internet Marketing Companies, Online Marketing Degree, Online Marketing Service

ONLINE MARKETING SERVICE

Online Marketing Service, also referred to as Internet marketing service is about using the Internet as another channel to market your business or organization. It’s about broadening your Web visibility, attracting qualified visitors to your website or getting interested people to email or call without even needing to come to your site. When visitors do come, through on-site marketing efforts and strong features, you lead them to do what you want them to do: fill out a form, register for an event or make a purchase from you through the internet usage. Some people would be eased to make their necessary work about their company by providing online worker from other place to make their job more easy to do.

Online Marketing Service builds, executes and measures direct response strategies using the Internet. Some key areas that the company should consider to concentrate on are acquisition of specific information, retention of the data being given on the site, awareness of how the site should be handled, optimization of the site content and behavior, and conversion of details through a more useful resource to the users online.

Here are some of the processes that the company should consider in getting their online marketing more effective:

1. Define Your Goal - work together with every member of your company to help clearly define exactly what it is you want to accomplish towards a more fruitful future using the online marketing service and how to set up goals which are important to the company.

2. Develop the Plan – the company should develop strategic, effective and measurable direct response marketing plans designed to achieve the company goals. Through the company's efforts of each member, a more suitable and easy way of conducting the plan can be performed.

3. Execute the Plan - provide capable and experienced project management throughout the entire implementation process. Each member of the company should be reliable, thorough, well-connected, and determined to make satisfied clients that are connected to the company. With these at hand, satisfied clients are willing to cooperate and pay more for the efforts of the company.

4. Measure the Results - No online marketing campaign is complete without measuring the results. Internet marketing strategies take tracking and measuring of the clients website advertisements before implementation occurs. This way, the company can measure their effectiveness to the clients as well as how better they know their company's effectiveness in the process. With the good results that the company is displaying, more and more clients are willing to be with the company and won't have second thoughts of paying a good amount for a good service that the company offers. Clients' satisfaction are very vital when it comes to consideration about the company's main goal.

ONLINE MARKETING DEGREE

Online Marketing Degree generally refers to the degrees that are offered in the internet through advertisements and well-presented by different courses that are being offered by the colleges and universities throughout the globe. It most likely want to prepare individuals in undertaking and managing the process of developing consumer audiences and moving products from producers to consumers by the use of the internet.

A more easy way to determine whether you're making the right decision in improving and pursuing your career as student is to continue studying and taking one of the major courses that the college or university offers. Online Marketing Degree includes instruction in buyer behavior and dynamics, principle of marketing research, demand analysis, cost-volume and profit relationships, pricing theory, marketing campaign and strategic planning, market segments, advertising methods, sales operations and management, consumer relations, retailing, and applications to specific products and markets.

Many colleges and universities have come up with the idea of advertising their different online courses because through this, a more practical, faster and easier way of advertising through the web can be seen and noticed. They will no longer have to make certain advertisements through television and radios just around their country but through online marketing service. The degrees that they offer will be seen by anyone from anywhere around the globe by the use of the internet. An effective way of advertising without the high costing.

A slight example on the online marketing degree is the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Marketing (B.S.B.A./MKT.) which puts working professionals on a clear path to lifelong learning and success. Maximizing their career opportunities, making important contributions to the profession, reaching the potential—that define success.

Through a program that combines academic theory with practical application, and includes courses in Ethical Leadership and in Social Responsibility, the students will gain knowledge and experience in areas vital to business and society. This concentration will help the students develop insights into an organization’s marketing effort by learning not only the traditional disciplines of alternate marketing channels, sales management, advertising and research, but also emerging marketing approaches related to consumer motivation, global customer management, customer relationship management, and marketing on the Internet.

Another example of an online marketing degree is the Master of Business Administration in Marketing (M.B.A./MKT.), it provides students with the ability to examine the relationship between marketing and corporate strategy and the tools necessary for developing and implementing strong marketing tactics throughout the companies in which they work. Through a hands-on curriculum including case analyses, this specialization lays the practical groundwork necessary for students interested in strengthening or furthering their career as a marketing professional or decision maker.

INTERNET MARKETING COMPANIES

Internet Marketing is a broad term that can include everything from pay-per-click management to a full-blown online marketing campaign that builds traffic and tracks site visitors to increase conversions from all mediums. Internet Marketing can be thought as encompassing all of the following disciplines: search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, link building and affiliate marketing.

Internet Marketing Companies work solely towards getting their client’s product or services marketed online, and this is really becoming something that modern businesses can’t live without. Obviously, an Internet marketing company can’t use the same techniques that a traditional advertising agency would use, such as television commercials and special promotions.

The things that an Internet marketing company can do are pretty amazing, though, because the costs are fairly low and the results can potentially reach a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, which allows businesses to draw out an instant response from potential customers, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing companies can bring creative and technical aspects together, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine optimization, pay per click management, display advertising, email marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

The services that an Internet marketing Company offers aren’t always something tangible that people can see, although things like banner ads and social media marketing (using sites like MySpace) are quite visible. Things like search engine optimization and pay per click management are more intangible, but they help promote a website by placing it where people will see it when they are looking for that type of product or service. Internet marketing companies grow and promote an organization using online media.

An Internet marketing company does not simply build a website or promote a website… They make that website visible to people who are likely to become real paying customers. For some reasons, people are making easier ways of advertising their products and news through the Internet because of its lower cost and its effectiveness. Consumers can see the products and massive orders and requests could be in any instant on line with the company which provides the products.

An online marketing campaign is necessary these days with the Internet become bigger and bigger by the day. Therefore, it is crucial to hire an effective Internet marketing company to help your business achieve the online results you are looking for.

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, there have been many new evolutions to online marketing. Thankfully, there are many Internet marketing companies that can show you the ropes about the industry so that you can capitalize with your online venture.

There is a wide variety of items that a quality Internet marketing company can provide to your business. One of the main sources of online marketing is in search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO. This process simply refers to the act of ensuring that your website appears in the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is achieved by submitting articles and keyword phrases all over the Internet because the more links that your website has on the Net, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Since most customers will choose to use the services of a company that is among the top ten in the search engines, SEO can work wonders for your online venture.

However, an Internet marketing company also has many other services that can benefit your business. Many of these particular companies also provide website designing and graphic design help that will make your website much more appealing to the public. If you search hard enough, you will be able to find a quality company that will produce your website from the ground up and then use SEO to ensure that your site gets the recognition it deserves.

Marketing And Advertising: Power Point Phrases That Will Create Income

When looking at any type of marketing advertisement, do you glance at the ad then set it down thinking that later you will call on it? Most of the time we forget about the service or product and end up weeks later throwing the ad away. What makes the difference between an immediate response to an ad, or having it end up in a pile of papers on your desk?

When marketing and advertising your home based business in any type of form, power point phrases are an idea tool to generate income. This will not only capture interest in your product or service, it will get people to respond.

Creating urgency through "call to action" phrases is an important and effective way to keep potential clients from forgetting about you. Generally, "call to action phrases" are phrases that promote a time frame for the client to respond. It is an offer that benefits them if they respond in a timely manner.

Below are nine "call to action" phrases that will capture a quicker response.

1. Biggest sale event of the year!

2. Limited Availability

3. Free Consultation-Limited Time Only

4. April 25th - May 10th (stating the dates the offer is available)

5. Call Now!

6. You area has been selected.

7. Two weeks only!

8. Call today to reserve your appointment time at this price

9. Offer expires 9/12/06

Make sure prices and information about your company are listed that will make them choose you over the competition. This is the time to outshine your competition. It is also the moment that you can substantiate credibility. Some of the following power point phrases can be used for these purposes.

1. Latest Technology

2. Recommended by.......

3. Our method is simply the best!

4. Guaranteed!

5. Money back if your not satisfied

6. Best Value

7. Lifetime Warranty

Competition in the home based business world today in becoming considerable. I have found that being creative and staying one step ahead of the competition is crucial. Take time to frequently analyze your company and other companies offering the same service or product. This is advantageous because it will show you when and where your company needs to improve and grow. It will also show you why other companies are either failing or succeeding.

Apply the knowledge that you gain into your advertising power point phrases. Large companies have used test marketing of their products or service for decades to determine where changes or improvements need to be made. We need to apply those same concepts in our home based business to stay ahead of the game in capturing business.

Lastly, you may need to change your ad until you get the most effective results. In fact changing your ad from time to time to promote a new aspect of your business is a good idea. However, keep the look of your ad consistent so that people will recognize it is your company. This is called branding. It takes time, effort and money to brand your company. You can change content but, keep your logo and general appearance the same. Marketing and advertising is a fun way to grow your company if you apply the correct principles.

8 Part Strategy For Constructing Your Advertising Message

Strategies to help produce your brochure, advertisment or direct mail. And make it achieve more sales.

1. Attract & keep the customer's eye

Your customer must be kept glued to your words. They may leave at any point of your copy so keep it attractive and relevant to their needs, right through to their decision to purchase.

Words, pictures and the customer:

Don't go overboard with pictures, its words that sell. You'll need your product photo of course but its the caption or headline that will make the difference. And the headline will be a benefit.

People buy products for what it will do for them, not what it looks like. Quite often, you'll see products like printers with features listed below an image. Here the advertiser has assumed that everyone knows the benefits of their printer and just need to know the specific features.

However a lot of people don't respond to pictures and lists of features, but they may respond to a photo of the product in use. For example you could show a child sat using a computer.

But that's not enough. Add a headline such as...'Now YOUR child can obtain higher grades' and that should get parents interested. You get the idea. The body text would describe how the computer helps children to learn.

Be very wary about using an agency to produce your copy writing. They may not know the principles involved in successful selling. The only way you can be sure is to have control over the production..usually unlikely when dealing with agencies... or produce the content yourself.

2. Content strategies

a) Descriptions: A lot of promtional documents leave the customer to guess at the benefits of the product or service advertised. They just describe it and their company. This is not good. Don't do it this way.

b) Comparisons: Here you could compare your product/service with your competitor's and specify how much better your's is. You could get in trouble if you name the other company and/or can't back up your claims with evidence. Works best by you having a major provable advantage over your competitors..and not naming them.

c) Storyline: A favorite with lots of folk. Tell a story involving the person the customer will relate to in a situation that shows the benefits your product/service gives that person.

Use a 'before using the product' and 'after using the product' strategy. At the end the person will summarise how much better their situation is nw after using your product. And you tell your readers how it will help them as well.

The hard bit is writing a true story. It's less effective than a made up one.

d) The most effective strategy is to use the well-known AIDCA formula..see section 8 further down.

3. Inspiration

My answer is to go for a walk in the countryside. There are two halves to our brains; the left being for logical functions and the right half for creative thinking. Apparently few logical people are able to take advanatage of the creative side at will. You have to relax and trick the brain into releasing your ideas.

Walking and daydreaming are a couple of techniques to employ.

4. Ideas for copy

You need to saturate your brain with all the elements about your product or service. Study what your product is made of, how strong it is and how it is put together. Consider the manufacturing process and the care taken throughout the production.

Write down all these details with the angle of 'how much better than our competitors is our product' and 'in what ways?' Write down your conclusions.

Do the same for your service. Take your service apart and study it as individual steps. Do your customers know about these steps? What benefits do these steps have for your customers? Maybe your competitors don't mention theirs and you could take advantage of this.

Your customer needs to be in the fore-front of your mind. Particularly your main customer group, the ones who share a common need. Don't forget, you'll want to aim separate message if you have more than one target customer group.

5. Producing your copy

Don't overdo it when you first start to put your ideas down on paper. Go over your notes and details about your product or service a few times and have a break from that particular subject for a day or too if necessary. I'm not saying take it to easy but don't try to force yourself, it won't work.

During this initial period you may well be getting flashes of inspiration and ideas ay odd moments. Write them down. I would advise always carrying a notebook or maybe a voice recorder to ensure all your creativity is not lost.

When you have decided to formally put everything down, find yourself a quiet room and ideally use a large A2 pad (which can be found in art stores) to record your information. Remember, you are writing down what it is you want to say to your customers to make them buy.

Write down the most important 'buying factor' on the pad. Then continue to put down all the others related to customer needs and buying factors. Forget any logical order, put them down as they come to you, adding detail as necessary. Keep relaxed and don't censor any ideas you have (unless they are too far removed from your area). You could intoruce others into this exercise and in effect hold a group brainstorming session.

You should end up with several pages of ideas.

6. Compiling messages needed to sell

You will see many ideas that you are familiar with but there may be some that you are not. Do some research on these. Your competitors may not have bothered and there could be some gold here.

Next you need to group together related ideas with colored pens. You'll find some remaining that don't fit in a group, but keep these. They may come to life later.

Now you need to structure your results so that you can develop your 'story' to relay to your customer. Put the group headings around a circle and then like the legs of a spider put the related ideas along them in order of sequence, importance or whatever criteria you have decided.

As you do all this your creative side will flag up more ideas to add to the pool. Now you can get some feedback from colleagues or even customers on what you have produced. This will optimise your results even further.

7. Producing your copy framework

You have two choice here. Hand your work over to a copywriter or carry on yourself. If you are carrying on yourself you need to decide on the most appropriate approach as defined in section 2 above; descriptions, comparative, situation or benefits.

Your message will be built around the AIDCA structure.

Attention: You must get the readers attention within seconds using your headline.

Interest: Get your prospect interested in your product.

Desire: This is where you detail how their needs can be fulfilled.

Conviction: Provide proof that this is the product that they need.

Action: Here you tell them what they must do to get it.

8. Using the AIDCA formula

Attention seeking headlines: Often the headline is left till last as it is the most difficult part of the message. And you may find it in the main copy itself. Short headlines rarely work. Remember, if you are using a picture its the wqords that will matter. The picture is a supporting element.

'Benefit' type headlines are best (even better if they are tiny storylines) with 'News' type second best. Generally you should include your product and the main benefit. Length is less important. Brochures, mailshots and magazine adverts tend to have longer headlines than straightforward advertisements.

Interest to be aroused: This is where you tell your main story using one of the strategies described earlier; description, comparative, situation or benefits.

Concentrate on how your product or service fulfils primary and secondary needs. Relate how it satisfies the customers buying factors and success factors that you have defined in your marketing assessment.

Desire to be created: You need to be enthusiastic here in describing what the product or service can do for the customer. Convince them that they will really benefit from your product. Expand on the detail. For example if your car is economical to run then write about how much money they will save and then buy a holiday with it.

Conviction needed: Here you need to prove to the reader that your claims about your product are true. Assume that they will disbelieve your cliams. If you have statistics use them. Show graphs. Show testimonials or endorsements from satisfied customers. Don't make them up. How could you prove they were real?

Action: It is imperative that you tell your readers what action you want them to take. And include a benefit along with it. For example; "Send for our full color catalogue. Its FREE, there is no obligation to buy."

There you have it! An 8 part strategy to help compile your advertising message and get you more sales.

Internet Marketing Strategy News: 6 Tips To Put Your Web Marketing On Steroids

The Internet has changed and will continue to change the way we do business. It has also created amazing marketing opportunities which should be incorporated into your Internet marketing strategy.

The rules of the marketing game have changed big time. The new reality:

* Over 80% of all web traffic is coming via search engines.

* 88% of economically active Americans go online everyday

* A recent study showed that 85% of users research products and services on the Internet before they purchase

* 77% get their news online through Google or Yahoo news

* 80% of all business on the Internet goes to the first three listings on the first page of a search result

* Research shows that searchers (your customers) regard good placing in the natural search results (as opposed to pay per click or sponsored links) as an indicator of a company who is tops in their field

* 99% of reporters start their research for a story on the Internet.
The bottom line is that your potential customers are researching their purchases online before spending their money. This also includes big-ticket items like cars and houses.

In a recent study, "Search Before the Purchase" from DoubleClick and comScore Networks notes half of all online purchases are preceded by multiple product-specific searches.

For the brick and mortar retail world keep in mind for your internet marketing strategy that consumers are using the search engines like product catalogs to research products and services--then printing out a map on how to get there. Yellow pages may become a thing of the past.

Use these tips to take advantage of the ever-increasing influence of the World Wide Web:

1. Do your homework on key words. The huge majority of people use search engines to find products and services that they are looking for. Find out what key words they are using. This is the heart of an Internet Marketing strategy. Consider it a mandatory form of survey and market research. Once you have determined the key words that people are searching for, and then check the number of competing pages. Create you key word strategy from your research.

2. Tune up your web site. Re-structure the content of your site so it attracts the users you want. Change the keywords in your title, description and keyword tags. Rewrite the home page and interior pages text using the key words that people are searching on.

Remember search engines can't read pictures so includes lots of text on your site. The home page should have a minimum of 250 words of text.

Keep in mind that your web site has to firstly attract the search engine before anyone can find it. The design, content and programming of your site all influence your search rankings. A well-written and designed web site is the foundation of your Internet marketing strategy. No matter how great your product is, if the public can't find you the sales are lost in the second it takes to click the mouse. On the flip side, an effective web site is the key to quality leads and volume sales.

3. Create regular online newsletters and encourage all visitors to the site to sign up for the free newsletter. A newsletter is an excellent and cost effective way to stay in touch and build a relationship with prospects and customers. Get an email distribution program that tracks the stats i.e. quantity sent, opened and clicked through to your web site. Use the free offer to build your list--you want to get a large volume of subscribers. Add the newsletters to your web site to increase content.

4. Start a blog to raise search visibility and create page one search results. A cover story in Business Week magazine was "Blogs Will Change Your Business, Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later."

5. Syndicate your content via RSS (really simple syndication) feeds so that you get exposure in other places on the Web. This also increases the number of links to your website. Syndication is a process of providing your content to others, doing updates of information and generally spreading your content from one place to another. One example is syndication in newspapers. You sometimes see a column that appears in several papers at once. It is syndicated. Syndication online allows you to share your content with your visitors and other websites.

Online syndication has many advantages: It vastly improves your site's visibility; makes your content available in a more convenient manner; feeds your content directly to interested parties; broadens your reach on the Internet and best of all, costs almost nothing to implement. An inexpensive must item for your internet marketing strategy.

6. Send out optimized press releases about your products or services- this will attract visitors and increase the number of links back to your website, which will raise your ranking in the search engines. Your audiences are actively online searching for news, products and services. It is no longer enough to send out press releases--or pitch journalists and hope that you will reach the right audience.

As consumers are actively searching for you using key words, then you need to put your press releases where they're looking--on the search engines and news engines.

The vast majority of economically active people are Internet savvy today and are using the Net to research products and services before they buy. Use these effective tools as key elements of your internet marketing strategy or you will simply be cut out of the picture.

Affiliate Marketing Versus Network Marketing (MLM)

Both affiliate marketing and network marketing pay people for referring a product or service. What then is the difference between affiliate marketing and network marketing?

The difference is best explained in terms of the way compensation is structured to pay for performance. Because of the many hybrid forms of compensation payments available now on the internet, to a newbie scouting for business opportunities, it is easy to get confused over the many terms and definitions used. In evaluating compensation plans, it is essential to understand the subtle difference between the two models. Ultimately, you want to understand…which model yields more income?

What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is usually done online. In its simplest form, affiliate marketers are compensated on a one time transaction only. Unlike products offered in a MLM business, affiliate products are often ones that a customer would only need to purchase one time. Thus, the more the affiliate marketer sell, the more they make. This is quite akin to direct sales albeit made via the internet.

Affiliate marketing has a compensation plan based on performance measures. For instance, if the affiliate marketer is successful in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, etc, he/she gets rewarded. The desired action as a means of compensation is already pre-agreed upon by the affiliate merchant and him/her.

In a short space of time, the affiliate marketing model has also evolved to a 2 level (or in some cases, up to 5 levels) compensation plan. In the popular 2-tier version, for instance, you (as an affiliate of a particular e-book merchant) will earn commission when you sell a book to person A and if person A signs up to be an affiliate and manages to sell to person A1, you get compensated too, in addition to person A.

Let’s now go on to talk about what network marketing is. In the network marketing model, the compensation plan works in a similar fashion, except that compensation by the sponsoring company can be paid up to several, several or unlimited levels. The number of levels and restrictions in terms of payout is very much dependent on the arrangement offered. As arrangements can vary from one company to the next, this makes comparisons of the various compensation plans available out there difficult. So be sure to read all the fine print!

At any level, a network marketer has the potential to earn a direct referral fee for directly recommending someone and a leverage fee when one of his/her “downlines” is successful for referring friends to the same network. In the popular binary plan adopted by many network marketing companies, each person in the network has two “legs” or “downlines”. If more people get referred to the network, they automatically go below the “legs”.

Ongoing customer use is what creates the real residual income in network marketing. The MLM business can generate earnings for a very long time even after the initial years of hard work and investment. With a solid network, residual income is assured at each renewal period of a “downline”. If the product or service involved in is one that has to be reordered at each renewal period, income should just keep coming in like clock work.

How does the difference in affiliate marketing and network marketing translate into in terms of building your customer relationships and your earnings power? In the network marketing model, to ensure that your “downlines” renew at each period, you must ensure that you build up a good relationship with them. It is essentially a people-build-people and a leader-build-leader business. The ability to generate huge sums of money is increased exponentially when the network grows. The potential to make huge sums of money is thus greater here if you can employ the efforts of others to help grow the business vis-à-vis the affiliate marketing model. In affiliate marketing, your earnings ability is limited by your own direct sales plus an additional of 1, 2 or up to 5 levels of leveraging efforts.

Having described the above, it would seem that to maximise your income, it is best to join online network marketing programs as opposed to affiliate programs.

Nope...I don't think that's really the case either.

Affiliate marketing is best described as an entry to online network marketing. Affiliate products are easier to sell, likely to involve one rather than an array of products and therefore, less expensive. For instance, an e-book is likely to have an associated affiliate program while access to a membership site of digital products is more likely to pay for recurrent renewals of membership.

In conclusion, there is always no harm in joining different programs whether affiliate or network marketing ones. Just be sure that you understand how you are paid and channel your efforts accordingly. Afterall, your goal is to build multiple sources of income. You have a choice to represent what or which combination of products/programs work best for yourself.

Is Your Advertising Working?

How do you know your advertising is working for you, do you know exactly who is buying your products or services. Many companies and businessmen even those who are making a reasonable living have no idea where their income is generated from.

Keeping good records of customers will help to expand your marketing ventures. Where they are buying, how did they get to know about your products or services these are questions you need to be asking yourself.

Placing adverts in a magazine is no guarantee that sale will come rolling in. If you are butcher and you supply special exotic cuts of meat and you are advertising in a butchers magazine you are still not guaranteed the sales will happen. This magazine might have a lower income audience so your $200 steaks are definitely not going to hit the tables.

A simple market survey to identify where your customers are coming from will ensure your advertising dollars are spent in the right places. If contacted by a customer ask him: how, where, when and obvious questions related to your products or services.

Trying to create the right marketing mix is a constant battle especially if you are starting a business. Where to advertise and what guarantees do you have that your magazine advert will work. For starters find a magazine that relates to your services or products, this is a start. The next step is to contact that publication and find out what bracket their readership falls into. Other than this without a track record of advertising in that particular publication you will have know idea if its the publication best suited for your needs.

Your customers are your best form of advertising without them you are nowhere. It is vital to know everything about him/her, attach a simple questionnaire to your products and make sure your employees sell solutions to your customers.

Another tip in closing about placing an advertisment, always make sure your advertisment is placed on the far right of the right hand page. Natural reading patterns are from left to right so the eyes tend to come to rest in this position. You are paying for this advert so stress this to the publication, i am sure they can accommodate you in this regard.

20 Major Marketing Mistakes

A surprisingly high number of people who are new to the world of online marketing believe that it is a simple art. If only this were true!

I’m not saying that they believe that all they need to do is find themselves a product, build a website, plug-in an order system, place an advertisement or two and then wait for the money to roll in, but many people simply fail to appreciate the significance of the use of the word Marketing in the phrase "Online Marketing".

A quick look at the index of any online marketing course will an indication of just what is involved in setting up your own internet business with such headings as, "Building a website", "hooking-up your order pages", "Setting-up a newsletter", "Winning the search engine war" and a great deal more. Now, each of these elements is important in its own right, but together, they simply create the framework necessary to allow you to start marketing your products or services.

However, even once you’ve dealt with all of this, people aren't going to start flocking to your website with their credit cards in their hands. You are going to have to go out and find your potential customers, get them to your website and then persuade them to buy your product or service.

So, the first question you need to ask yourself before you try and sell anything online is whether or not you are a salesperson?

Before you invest even one single penny in setting-up your online business, you have to understand that your principle role will be that of salesperson.

Now, many people have a problem when it comes to seeing themselves as a salesperson, often because of the stereotype that paints all sales people as dishonest and ready to do just about anything that they have to get us to part with our hard-earned cash.

Naturally, the problem with stereotypes is that they are often very wide of the mark. The vast majority of sales people are simply ordinary people doing a job and, like most of us, they are decent, hard-working and honest people. Despite this the many of us have been brought up to distrust the salespeople and that makes your job as an online marketer that much harder.

So, how do you jump this particular hurdle? Well, there are really only two ways to deal with the marketing needs of your business.

The first is to accept your role as salesperson for your business and learn as much as you can about selling online. In practice, this means doing your homework and seeking out some of the more successful internet marketers and following their example. There are too many to list them here but, as you do your research, you will discover names such as Jim Edwards, Jay Abraham, Ken Evoy and Terry Dean that come up time and time again. Each of these successful marketers has his own particular style and you will warm to some immediately and find that there are others that you simply can’t get in tune with at all. All are however extremely successful online marketers and have a great deal to offer by way of help and advice.

The second approach is to accept the fact that you are not comfortable filling the role of salesperson.

Now this doesn't mean that you can merely ignore the problem of needing a salesperson in the hope that it will go away, because it won't! Like it or not, marketing is crucial to your success and it must take the prime spot in your online business plan. However, if you really feel that you can't take on this role then don't. Simply get somebody else who can fill the role.

This might mean taking on a partner, or employing someone to take care of your marketing for you, both of which are major, and possibly costly, steps. Nevertheless, your business will suffer badly if you don’t put marketing at the centre of your operation and this in one bullet you are going to have to bite.

Of the many hundreds of new businesses that appear online every week the majority will fail and, of those that do make it, only a tiny proportion will be truly successful. In almost every single case the secret to their success lies in will be the importance that the business owner places on the role of marketing and on his own role as a salesperson.